


The End of the Freakin’ Galaxy

by SharKohen



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adventure, Crime, Dark Stuff, Dog BB-8, F/M, Gen, I don’t know what I’m doing actually, Immaturity, Modern AU, Murder, Orphan Rey (Star Wars), Teenagers, Young Love, animal cruelty, comedy?, disturbed!Ben, not that his nephew’s impressed, psychopaths, reverend! Luke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 19:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15226464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharKohen/pseuds/SharKohen
Summary: Rey’s tired of waiting for the people who left her in Jakku to save her from Unkar Plutt’s mistreatment, so she’s going to find them on her own. Determined to return the dog BB-8 to its owner, maybe, just maybe, she can figure out who she is. But to cross the country, she needs a car.Ben Solo thinks he’s a psychopath, and it’s time to move to the next step of self-actualisation. Also, he wants to punch his uncle.Luke might have a car.Inspired by ‘The End of the F***ing’ World, but deviates a lot from it. No explicit swearing, no adult stuff. Let’s keep it PG for the kids.Oh, but there’s murder and animal cruelty. Heh.





	The End of the Freakin’ Galaxy

**Warning: Mentions of Animal Cruelty**

~~~0~~~

His name is Ben Solo. Legally.

In his brain, he calls himself Kylo Ren, because Kylo Ren is cool. Also, he couldn’t be more different than the missionary/war-veteran/American legend that he is named after. He doesn’t care that the original Ben Kenobi was someone both his uncle and grandpa held in the highest regard. From everything Ben has ever read about him, the old man sounds like the nicest, wisest, possibly-most God-fearing man that ever walked the Earth. So yeah, zero-relatablility.

You see, Ben is a probably psychopath.

I mean, how many kids do you know punch a fist through a wall, then undergo a surgery for the fracture without anaesthesia, get a long lecture from his very troubled (and stupendously useless) father and still not feel anything?

Except maybe rage. And mild irritation with fore-mentioned father.

Not that he thinks of Han as his father anymore. In his brain, Han has been increasingly reduced to the status of ‘ _just-that-guy-who-happened-to-donate-half-my-chromosomes’_ , and he has been waiting for the good-for-nothing ex-con to show up, just so that he could spit that phrase at him. You know, in a cool monotone, so as to show that totally he doesn’t care about his _fath-_ Han anymore. He practices saying it in front of the mirror sometimes, just in case. He’s been practicing for seven years now.

His uncle thinks he’s weird. That’s how he labelled – weird.

It’s ironic, because Luke’s, like, way weirder. Most people think Luke’s the second Ben Kenobi, just because he joined the airforce in his younger years and served as a missionary in the rural parts of Nigeria for several years. The people there called him a prophet, because apparently he had a healthy tract record of ‘magic’, like making rocks float, healing the sick, even predict the future. The church back in the states of course abhorred any reference of magic and tacked the label of ‘miracles’ instead - not that it made the stories sound anymore credulous.

So maybe he did do the stuff, maybe he didn’t, but it’s a bit hard to believe the Great Luke Skywalker was more than an eccentric weirdo after watching the way he drinks milk. His uncle believes in getting it straight from the udder. It’s uncomfortable to watch. Also highly unhygienic.

Ben believes in hygiene. He always wears gloves before killing anything. He doesn’t want the blood getting under his nails and all that, you know.

Han was the one who taught him how to hunt, actually, back in the day when he still lived with his parents and he wasn’t aware that there was something wrong with himself, or those around him. The first kill was on a farmstead over vacation, where Han stood over him and guided his small hands to slice the bared neck of a chicken. The horrid thing though was that the chicken had escaped his grasp after the first cut. It ran a bit around the yard, blood gushing down its feathers as it squawked in distress. Ben’s eyes had rolled the back of his head at the sight, and he promptly blacked out.

When his mom heard of what happened, she yelled at Han through the night. Han yelled back that if Ben was going to be a man, he needed to do know how to take responsibility, and that meant knowing how to get the job done. It was just one of the many arguments that would escalate in the years to come.

Dinner that night was good though.

After moving to his uncle’s, hunting opportunities lessened since Luke’s interest leaned more towards theology and religion rather than the great outdoors. But hours on end with time to spare meant that Ben’s childhood had plenty opportunity to experiment.

It started with insects, then lizards, then birds. Then he moved to mammals - rats, cats, rabbits, and so forth. Initial kills were messy, but as he got better with wielding his hunting knife, he learned how to drag out the process and to quicken it, to observe what eased the suffering and what worsened it. He went through quite a few species of each creature, trying to determine if various methods of slaying might induce a different emotion within himself.

It didn’t, by the way. Mostly all he felt was a clinical curiosity, and then ...nothing.

Maybe he should talk to someone about this.

Hmm. Nah.

Anyway, he caught a Chihuahua some days ago and hid it in a cage in the back of a shed in the forest. He considers chloroforming it before the doing the deed, but reckons that if he’s going to prepare for his ultimate masterwork, he needs to recreate similar conditions. Besides, chloroform takes the fun out of everything.

As Ben slides his hunting knife through the neck of the creature, he notes curiously how suddenly the struggling ceases and the taut muscles pushing against him abruptly lost their tension. He props the dog up on one hand, observing its blank countenance while blood trickles down his arm, all the way to his elbow. He grimaces as he eyes the red liquid on his uncovered skin. He needs to get longer gloves.

With task completed, he buried the carcass in the forest. He washes up by the river, and the gloves too. Once there’s no clear sign of red, he dumps the gloves in the bin outside a nearby petrol kiosk, before walking back home.

When he arrives, he finds that his uncle is in the dining room with an elderly woman. It’s Ms. Harter Kalonia, the old nurse who lives a few blocks down, whose also a devout member of Luke’s flock.

“It’s just-” the woman blows her nose “-it’s just not like Arry to be gone so long, Reverend. She’s a good girl, well-trained and all that. And oh,” she clutched a wiry hand into her chest “I’m so dreadfully worried, you know?”

“Come, come, now, Ms. Kalonia. It’s no good worrying over this,” he hears his uncle say. He can’t see his face, but he can imagine Luke wearing the kindly sympathetic face that he puts out in public, and discards immediately once in privacy. “You’ve already informed the police, put up the missing posters. You’ve done all that you could, and the rest now rests in the Lord’s hands.”

“I know, I know, just that-” _loud nose blow._

Ben turns on his heel and heads up the staircase instead. He makes a beeline for his room, which is a drab, plain place with cluttered shelves and stuffed closets. Before he moved in, the room had served as a storage room. Luke hadn’t bothered to clear all the junk, citing that the boy wasn’t going to be here long anyway. But the agreed two weeks stretched into a month, then two months, then a year, then years…

Anyway, Ben doesn’t really think of this room as his, just a place where he happens to sleep. He has the vinyl jacket for Metallica’s Sandman stuck to the wall, and some poster of a Finnish symphonic metal band that Luke gave to him, but there’s little else in the cramped space that really reflects his personality. Not that getting personality is very high on his priorities.

He does like black though. Black’s cool. Also, sometimes he considers investing in eyeliner but he is worried about skin allergies.

He sits down at the stool that near his study desk, the same that Luke set up apologetically for him after year three of his stay, removing the knife from his pocket. He cleans with the blade with wet wipes, before slipping it into the hidden pocket in his boot. Ben sewed that little pocket himself, learning it from a tutorial from YouTube. He’s quite proud of the hem work.

He removes his journal from the secret place that he hid it, which is underneath an uneven floorboard. He flips it open and records his learnings from his kill today. He turns to the page where he tallies up the various creatures that he has killed, along with the method of death and time lapse between the strike and actual death. When he closes the notebook, he is puzzled to find himself strangely dissatisfied, as if he hadn’t accomplished something new today.

But come to think about it, killing a dog isn’t all that different from killing a cat, and he has killed a lot of cats. So really today hasn’t exactly been an advancement a much a variation. He needs something different – something new.

Just as he’s about to close the book, he finds the old yellowed photograph that he glued to the front page, but has since peeled itself off. He had discovered it years ago, amongst the various items in Luke’s store cupboards and has always treated it with the greatest respect.

No one in his family talked much about his grandfather. Oh, not Grandpa Bail. Lots of people talk about Grandpa Bail. Too much, actually. How he was became the first Hispanic mayor of Alderaan city, how he actually rose to Senator later on and championed for better education and health services for underprivileged immigrants. Even now, at his advanced age, he was very much involved in the refugee work across both the Middle East and South Asia. He used to work closely with Ben Kenobi too, and no doubt was pleased to hear that his adopted daughter’s son would be named after him.

In other words, Grandpa Bail was super, ultra boring.

Anakin Skywalker, on the other hand, was … _something else._

No one in his family talked about him, but the Internet helped to fill some blanks. Anakin was heavily involved in the airforce, like Luke. He was tight with Ben Kenobi, but where Kenobi was known for being a peacekeeper and negotiator, General Skywalker of the 501st Battalion was known to be the undeniable _badass_. Stories from his fellow servicemen described him as daring, fearless and unconventionally intelligent. He was known to pull crazy stunts with dangerous odds, and most of the time, he pull through it. He was known mainly for his aerial prowess, yes, but even with regard military tactics, he was a formidable foe. Even after climbing the ranks, he still kept himself close to the ground, fighting alongside his men every opportunity he could. He had pretty much become a legend before he even hit his twenty-fourth year.

Then after that, there’s no more news about him. It’s just like Anakin Skywalker vanished from the face of the Earth, and nobody tried to remember him.

Well, not him. Not Ben Solo. Let the world have their Ben Kenobis, their Bail Organas, their Luke Skywalkers – all the nice, good guys. He’d rather be like his real grandpa – the badass.

He wonders whether Anakin Skywalker would say to his slaughter work. Maybe he could give him some tips.

He hears a knock on his door and slams his book shut just as it creaks open.

Luke’s sticking his head in. He looks tired. “Hey.”

Ben swallows. He schools his face into expressionlessness. “Hey.”

His uncle is scratching his head. The brown on his scalp is showing hints of grey, but it’s the wrinkles around his eyes that really ages him. “Um,” he clears his throat, “how’s your day?”

The boy thinks back to the carcass that he has buried in the forest, and the dissatisfaction that ensued. “Not much.”

“Right. Mine too. Um,” Luke struggles for a while with what to say. “Ms. Kalonia’s dog is missing, and I’m thinking going down with some others to look for it. Want to start before it gets too dark though.” He nods at the towards the orange sun bleeding in the horizon. “Will be late back though, so-”

“I’ll make my own dinner,” Ben interrupts, knowing what his uncle’s fishing for. “Don’t worry about me.” He doesn’t mention that the search would be useless, for obvious reasons.

Luke seems pleased with his response. “Yes! Yes, great. Um.” He scratching his head again. “Thanks for understanding, kid.”

“No problem,” Ben tells him without emotion. He’s not lying about it…he just doesn’t really care.

“Right. Um.” His uncle decides to give his scalp a rest and starts scratching the beard that sprouting from his chin. “Don’t stay up to late.”

“I won’t.”

Finally, the door closes.

As Ben spins his chair back to his desk, he wonders what it would like to punch his uncle straight in the face. He usually thinks about it when Luke says something awkward, or does something weird. But he doesn’t, because to be fair, his uncle hasn’t exactly done anything to deserve it. Yet. He needs to save the opportunity for the right moment.

There’s an art to timing the strike, as Han once taught him. Never go in for the kill straight away. Not all preys are worth the pursuit. Not all prizes are worth the effort. Sometimes, one needs to wait patiently, until the perfect target comes along. And then afterwards, there’s even more waiting, for the target to come nearer. If required, gain the trust of target, make them comfortable in your presence. Then, then when the time is right –

He drops the book back into its hiding spot. A new notion has risen in his mind, one that he eagerly toys with. Perhaps its time that he left the killing of animals behind him. It’s getting sort of pointless anyway, and it clearly garnered no results in bettering his temperament or sating his curiosity.

No. It’s time he moves on to humans.

~~~0~~~

She doesn’t want to grow old scrubbing car parts.

But she has already, in a way. Grown older, really, rather than grown old. The first time she picked up an inverter and pressed a brush against its surface, she was eight. It’s been eight years, and she’s still doing the same old thing. Every morning, it’s scavenging for parts in the automobile scrapyard. Every afternoon, it’s cleaning the pieces up. Every evening, it’s trading them in for their allowance.

None of them are supposed to do other jobs. Plutt doesn’t like the idea of any of them having financial security that doesn’t hinge on his own generosity.

It’s not that no one has tried. Rey herself manage to make a bit of money selling the parts she scavenge online instead, with prices far better than anything Plutt offered. She got found out though, when one of Plutt’s lackeys saw her sneaking boxes off to the post-office. The egregiously obese man threatened to drive her out of Jakku if she did that again, and refused her any allowance for two weeks. When she came down to his office, apologising with all the sincerity she could muster, he extended ‘leniency’ by allowing her back onto his scavenging ring – with half the pay. She had to work twice as hard as the other kids housed in Plutt’s dilapidated apartment just to eat the same as always.

It isn’t impossible to leave. She knows a couple of kids who made a run for years ago. No one heard of anything about them since. They could be living like kings somewhere in California. Or they might be begging on the streets of New York. Or just dead in a gutter somewhere, from drug overdose or a mugging gone wrong. Or just prison. Nobody knows for sure, and nobody really wants to know.

Rey’s not afraid of the big, bad world. She’s not afraid of a lot of things. She knows she pretty smart, and she learns quick – you had to, to survive Plutt’s world. Though she’s small and scrawny, she can protect herself well enough, thanks to the quarterstaff that she got for her twelfth birthday. (Oh, she gave herself that the quarterstaff, so…did that count as a real birthday gift?)

The only thing she’s afraid of is that they’ll never find her. ‘They’ being whoever had left her here. It’s been eight years, yes, but they’ll be back soon. Hopefully.

And if she moves, they might never find her.

So she scrubs the inverters, the colliders, the metallic sheaths and the positional thrusters, and she carries her collection to the pasty, portly, double-chinned beast that is Unkar Plutt.

He eyes her offerings with slimy contempt, and she tries not to swallow too obviously. Eventually, he says, “Quarter portion.”

Her eyes widen while her brain does the calculations. “That’s only enough for two days!”

“That’s the final offer,” the greasy sludge-like creature tells her. “Take it or leave it.”

She hesitates, and silently concedes.

With the few bills that made up her pay for the night, Rey runs to the nearby convenience store. Counting her money, she decides on a loaf of bread. She considers jam, but eventually chooses peanut butter, hoping that the thicker texture of the spread might let it last longer. She reluctantly parts with half the notes she had been given before grabbing her wares. She hugs them close to her, gaze darting back and forth as she watches for any potential snatchers. It happened before when she was much younger and less of a threat, but now, she hopes that her staff would be enough to ward off potential contesters.

When the girl arrives back at the apartment, she hears shouting coming from the front – bits and pieces of Spanish, mingled with crude American slang and crying. She makes a loop around the back instead. As she makes for the backdoor, she spots one of the kids fussing in the back alley. There’s a stick in his hand, and there’s also high-pitched yelping.

Frowning, Rey slowly approaches the scene. The perpetrator is Teedo, one of the older kids in Plutt’s scavenging ring, and he appears to be harassing a small ball of fur, which responded by making indignant squeaks

“Teedo!” she snapped.

The boy turns to look at her, but doesn’t lay down his stick. In the dim light, she can’t tell his expression, but his body language makes it clear that her interruption isn’t welcome.

Well, Rey doesn’t care about his feelings. Raising her staff, she says, “Leave that thing alone.”

“I found it first,” Teedo grumbles under his breath, sulky. “I get to pick what to do with it. It’s mine.”

“I said leave it alone, or I’m telling Plutt what you did.”

Teedo pauses briefly, considering her threat. He then mutters suspiciously, “And what’s that, eh?”

“I think you know what I’m talking about,” Rey said, stepping forward, the base of the pole dragging alone the dirt ground. She glares hard the older boy, not caring that he’s taller. “Do you really want me to say it? And say it loud enough for Plutt to hear?”

An expression of uneasiness appears on Teedo’s face as he glances back at the building. Eventually, he drops the stick and scoots away, heading back to the apartment while muttering to himself.

The girl let out a sigh. Thank God that bluff worked.

Rey finally looks at the creature of interest. It’s a dog. It’s by no means small, rising up to her calves, but its slender legs and fox-like ears makes it seem tinier than it should have been. It’s orange and white fur was dusted with dirt and soil, but there’s no sign of wounds. It’s lets out a low growl as it observes the retreating figure of Teedo, before its small neck twists its triangular face up to her. It stares.

The girl stares back, feeling a little awkward. “Hello.”

The dog wags its tail, sticking its tongue out. It seems happy.

Slinging her bag of breakfast over her shoulder, Rey tells it, “Well, you’re free to go now.” She gestures out to the open gate that lead away from the apartment complex. “Go on now.”

The dog follows her line of sight, then looks back at her and wags its tail.

Peeved, but not that surprised, Rey spins on her heel and heads toward the apartment. When she glances behind her, however, she notices that the dog is following her.

She halts her steps, spinning around. “No, no. Don’t do that.” With her quarterstaff, she points to the gateway. “Go home, or wherever you’re from.”

The dog doesn’t even bother to shift its view anymore, just staring at her with large, blank eyes.

Letting out a frustrated groan, the girl crouches down. “Look,-” she catches sight of the tag attached to the canine’s collar “-BB-8. I can’t bring you in. Plutt doesn’t allow pets.” She let out a snort, pushing back stray strands from her face. “I don’t want a pet either. Anyway, you have an owner, don’t you?”

It might have been her own imagination, but the dog became a little …sad.

Beneath the hard mask of practicality she often wears, a pang of sympathy thuds against her chest. It’s the part of her that makes her cry at night when other kids are mean to her. It’s the part of her that makes her give spare change to the blind beggar outside the church, only to see him reading a paper the next morning. It’s the part of her that still pretends that there’s hope, that whoever that left her here would come…

No, no, it’s pretend. They’ll come back. They will. But will anyone come back for BB-8?

She lets out a sigh. She already knows what she’s going to do.

“Alright, but you better be quiet, okay?” Rey holds her arms out and the dog readily jumps into them. He plants a few wet licks on her face, making her cringe as she straightens herself up.

Glancing around her, she pushes the door open and disappears into the night.

 ~~~0~~~

**A/N:**

**Ben’s age is seventeen here. Rey’s sixteen.**

**My first story on AoE and my first time writing for Star Wars. A little nervous.**

**If you are intrigued/interested by whatever the heck this is, be sure to kudos/bookmark/subscribe/comment.**

**I’m still not sure where this is going...**

 


End file.
